Sight Selection

The top sight is a spooled fiber pin while the bottom one is not. You can readily see the difference in visibility in this ground blind setting.

Spooled fiber pins of all makes and styles are more visible than any other non-electronic sight option. As result, bowhunters are flocking to them in droves. Here’s how this sight style came into existence.

“If you look at the ends of a five-foot piece of straight raw fiber, the light is so bright that it almost hurts your eyes,” Bahram Khoshnood, of Impact Archery told me. Bahram was the first to market a fiber optic sight with the fibers wrapped around the pin guard to enhance their length without sacrificing protection. “I was handling raw fibers one day in late 2001 when the inspiration hit me. The very brightest possible fibers are straight, but packaging several feet of straight fiber in a bow sight is impossible, so I began experimenting by wrapping the fiber around a clear housing and then inserting one of the free ends into the sight pin.”

Immediately, Bahram knew he was onto something because the single pin was brighter than anything he had ever seen on a non-electronic hunting sight. It hit the market at the 2002 and the sight market was changed forever.

HOW MUCH FIBER IS ENOUGH?

The question that begs an answer is this: how much fiber is enough? The answer depends on what you are trying to accomplish. For example, some bowhunters are more than satisfied with just six to eight inches of wrapped fiber. The aiming point may not blister your eye during the middle of the day, but it is still visible 30 minutes after sunset even on overcast days. Other sights feature 20 to 30 inches to increase brightness slightly. Finally, there are the sights with fiber by the yard.

The amount of fiber a bowhunter needs has more to do with his goals and his specific hunting situation than the capabilities of the sights themselves. For example, many of us did just fine for years using fiber that wrapped around the pin shaft and was only a couple of inches long. These were not spooled. However, as my eyes start to grow weaker with age, I will no doubt be looking for brighter and brighter pins. I can see the changes coming already. And when it comes to low light shooting, as long as you have a large peep sight that doesn’t impede your view of the target, a highly visible pin makes aiming easier.